Synopsis:
A student of Philosophy suffers from lack of money and loneliness. He decides to kill the owner of a shop and has to learn the influence of conscience. When he falls in love with a girl he has to take responsibility for his actions. The script is based on Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime And Punishment”.

News & Reviews

BFI - 18 May 2012

After A Prophet, you might justifiably have expected Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone to have been the most impressive film of the second day of Cannes press screenings. But that particular redemption drama screened to a very mixed reception, and while I was certainly to be found at neither end of the critical spectrum, for me today’s most satisfying movie was undoubtedly Student, by Darezhan Omirbayev.

MUBI Europe - 01 January 1900

"This is to be judged by the viewers, not by me. I based my film on this novel not accidentally. Marcel Proust said once: “Dostoevsky’s style is a bit clumsy, but the power of his novels is in their compositional harmony and beauty”. And this beautiful composition came thanks to those problems and ideas that troubled Fyodor Mikhailovich. And plus, some prose is very keen to be filmed – and “Crime&Punishment” is among of such. I was impressed much by the sequence where Raskolnikov, having murdered the old X, forgets to shut the door and an accidental person steps in. Also, this novel has a social undertone which is very actual nowadays. The 60s of 19th century were the period of launching capitalism that bred the conflict in a Russian society. The reaction of young minds was quite harsh, and Dostoevsky made it to catch that zeitgeist. The same process is currently going on in modern Kazakhstan: there’s too big financial gap between people and that troubles the youth of Kazakhstan very much."

ScreenDaily - 20 May 2012

"With his new film Student, Kazakh director Darezhan Omirbayev puts to rest any notion among the world’s intellectuals and literary folk that adaptations of Dostoievski’s great Crime and Punishment have been exhausted. Not only is his aesthetic singular—lean, pared down to nicely textured basics, excision of extraneous images and sounds—but the overall social, political, and geographical context is so unique that it affords him the opportunity to spin the entire narrative in an uncharted direction. The use of gorgeous spare wrapping for complex ideas is an inspired choice that keeps the entire project both accessible and stimulating."

Variety - 18 May 2012

"A roughly faithful adaptation of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," despite its setting in contempo Almaty, Kazakh filmmaker Darezhan Omirbayev's "Student" unspools a stark, Bressonian tale of a young man who commits an almost random act of murder. With its deadpan perfs, retro visual style and crime-story plot, the pic almost feels like an Aki Kaurismaki movie but without the jokes or rockabilly music, just the despair. "Student" is bound to study abroad at fests, especially given Omirbayev's reputation (after "Killer") as one of Kazakhstan's most accomplished helmers, but distribution will be minimal beyond the CIS and Germany, where so many Russian-speakers reside."